Rot & Bloom is a B/G midrange deck built around a small but dense lifegain subtheme. Cheap creatures that gain life every time something enters the battlefield stack value early, while "Infusion" cards get stronger the moment you've gained life that turn. The plan is to grind: trade efficiently with removal, keep gaining incidental life, and let that life total fuel bigger swings later — either through pumped Infusion creatures or graveyard recursion buying back your best threats.
Roles
Threat:Bogwater Lumaret and Pest Mascot scale as the game goes long; Sneering Shadewriter closes games out of nowhere with an 8-point life swing.
Removal:Grapple with Death is the backbone (kills anything, gains life), backed by Last Gasp, Feed the Swarm, and Wander Off for anything that slips through.
Ramp:Llanowar Elves and Mindful Biomancer (which also gains you life) smooth the curve into your four- and five-drops.
Card draw:Pull from the Grave and Follow the Lumarets refill your hand, both getting better the more life you've already gained.
Protection:Efflorescence doubles as a combat trick and, once you've gained life, makes a creature indestructible.
Lands:Titan's Grave and Jungle Hollow both fix your colors and add life, quietly feeding the whole engine before a spell is even cast.
Synergies & curve
The curve is low and creature-dense (17 creatures, most costing 1-3), so Burrog Banemaker and cheap deathtouch bodies can trade up early while Bogwater Lumaret triggers repeatedly off your own board. Cheerful Osteomancer // Raise Dead lets you rebuy whatever just died, and Pull from the Grave turns two dead creatures back into a two-for-one plus life. Every point of lifegain is doing double duty — it's both a defensive cushion and the enabler for Efflorescence's indestructible mode and Follow the Lumarets' upgraded card selection.
Cast Bogwater Lumaret, gain 1, then flash in Efflorescence on an attacker for +2/+2, trample, and indestructible before blockers are even declared.
Weak spots
The deck has no flying blockers and only one true evasive threat (Sneering Shadewriter), so it can struggle against aerial aggro. It also leans on incidental 1-life triggers rather than a dedicated payoff finisher, meaning games can go long without a clean kill condition — Pull from the Grave and repeated removal are doing the closing work instead of a single bomb.
4× Bogwater Lumaret
$0.27
1× Broken Wings
$0.21
2× Burrog Banemaker
$0.22
2× Cheerful Osteomancer // Raise Dead
$0.13
2× Efflorescence
$0.13
2× Feed the Swarm
$0.37
2× Follow the Lumarets
$0.11
5× Forest
$0.16
1× Golgari Guildgate
$0.11
4× Grapple with Death
$0.20
2× Jungle Hollow
$0.24
2× Last Gasp
$0.10
3× Llanowar Elves
$0.30
1× Mindful Biomancer
$0.06
2× Pest Mascot
$0.29
4× Pull from the Grave
$0.15
1× Sanguine Indulgence
$0.16
1× Sneering Shadewriter
$0.14
11× Swamp
$0.18
4× Titan's Grave
$0.20
2× Ulna Alley Shopkeep
$0.07
2× Wander Off
$0.11
